Traffic

How We Get From Here to There

Published: July 18, 2008

America’s story is one of migration and expansion. In this hour, we explore the history of America’s highways and byways. We hear from Gridlock Sam, who fights traffic for a living, and Peter Norton, who takes us back to the dawn of the motor age. Then we travel through America’s canalways with batteau reenactors and John Larson, a scholar who explains the delicate issue of who foots the bill for internal improvements. Finally, Susan Rugh reminds us that “freedom of the road” simply wasn’t a reality for black Americans in the 1950s, a period when physical and social mobility seem particularly linked.

Show Highlights

No Vacancies

Historian Susan Rugh describes the discrimination black families faced on America’s highways in the 1940s and 50s. Many of those travelers recounted their experiences in letters to the NAACP – letters that eventually helped convince U.S. Senators to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Taking it to the Streets

Historian Peter Norton speaks with 20th Century History Guy Brian Balogh about how automobile companies in the 1920s managed to re-define streets as a space for cars, rather than pedestrians. And he explains the little-known history of the term “jaywalker.”

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Related Links

Read a chapter from Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City

Comments (5)

citizenw

At the time the Constitution was written, and the District of Columbia was envisioned, the ten miles square maximum included in the proposed District would have represented a several hour trip by horseback or horse and carriage, from the edge of the District, to the Capitol at the Center.

0ne of the considerations in not allowing the District direct representation was to reduce the influence of locals who had close physical proximity to lawmakers.

Given that today we live in a much different world, where physical proximity plays a much smaller role in personal influence due to communications and transportation advances (telegraph, radio, television, internet, emails, faxes and telephones as well as planes, trains, cars, etc.), shouldn’t the size of the District be re-visited? Should it be expanded to include all within a several hour drive by automobile? a several hour ride by train? a several hour flight by plane?

Or, since physical proximity is much less influential today, should we just shrink the size of the District to the Capitol grounds, and hew closer to the meaning of the basic principle that all men are created equal, by arranging a means by which the half-million resident of DC are governed by their own consent, as is the rest of the country, rather than being governed by decisions made by others around the nation, without either voice or vote from DC denizens?

Deb

What I find interesting about transportation is how vehicle propulsion technology runs in cycles, something like clothing styles do.

In the late nineteenth century America’s metropolitan centers were suffering from a massive pollution crises. And while the burning of coal, garbage accumulation, and inadequate septic systems were a large part of the problem, pollution stemming from horses was equally problematic. Ranging from abandon carcasses to mounds of manure, horses were anything but zero emissions conveyances. That was especially true in the warm seasons when massive amounts of pulverized feces and dried urine was swept into the air by summer breezes only to settle in living quarters, on open-air markets, in salons, and virtually anywhere a door or window was open.

Around 1890, however, Thomas Edison built the first nickel-iron batteries and electric cars soon began to appear on city streets. Clearly, city dwellers loved the new mode of transportation as it was silent, convenient, and required little maintenance when compared to a horses. But most importantly of all – electric vehicles (EVs) produced no pollution. EVs were the perfect replacement for horse powered transportation. Daily commuters, inner city delivery operators, and high-society socialites all quickly adopted the horseless carriage – which was electric – not gas powered as we often forget in modern times. And even when gasoline powered cars began to appear on the streets, EVs still dominated the auto market until Ford began mass production of low-cost vehicles.

Ford’s inexpensive assembly-line cars, coupled with highway improvements that connected cities, and finally the introduction of the first electric-gas hybrid car (that is, the use of an electric motor to start the gasoline engine) signaled the relegation of the EV to the status of a museum curiosity.

Now, almost exactly one hundred years later, EVs are poised to return en masse. And once again, their reintroduction is partly animated by the pollution problem of climate changing greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Long-time proponents of EVs are quite cognizant of the fact that EVs ushered in the petroleum age and are now ushering it out – hopefully the oil derrick will soon become the museum curiosity! To my knowledge we’ll never fight a war over electricity.

So, like clothing styles that were once fashionable, transportation propulsion technology seems to go in and out of style as well.

John Ledbury

Your podcasts are terrific, love listening to them. (I’m probably wrong to assert that) we Brits drive on the left because most people are right handed and you need your sword to defend yourself against oncoming horsemen. It’s the best I can do. But why / how did you guys take the decision to drive on the wrong side of the road? (I know Czechoslovakia drove on the left until Hitler fetched up in 1933 and ordered them to change over – nuff said!) Thanks